Snow On The Road

This was taken just before Christmas on I-5 going to Grants Pass.
Looks worse then it really is.

Family And Christmas Go Together

We had a great time, everyone made in.
Ben, Molly and John, and Dominic, Robyn and Paul and Alex, Sam, Daniel.

This year we had the grand babies, this adds a new element to the season, that is a good thing I mean.

It made it hard on the parents, but they were glad to make the effort, and we all took turns holding the little guys.

This is the best picture I got, the other were dusted out for what ever reason.

The weather was snowing type, and it snowed on and off the two days or so of Christmas.
We have had more day of snow this year then years pasted.

I would say about 5 days of snow fall, at this time.
Most years we get, about 3 days of snow.
This is not piles of snow but, just days when the snow would stick, and build up, from 1/2 to 1.00 inch.

New Years Eve 2009

We stayed home this year and had and great evening.
The Ford boys, had fun to.

What Happened ????

This guy had to be going 100 mph!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

> Math Question: A Backhoe weighing 8 tons is on top of a flatbed trailer and heading east on Interstate 70 near Hays, Kansas. The extended shovel arm is made of hardened refined steel and the approaching overpass is made of commercial-grade concrete, reinforced with 1 1/2 inch steel rebar spaced at 6 inch intervals in a criss-cross pattern layered at 1 foot vertical spacing. Solve: When the shovel arm hits the ove rpass, how fast do you have to be going to slice the bridge in half?? (Assume no effect for headwind and no braking by the driver...) Extra Credit: Solve for the time and distance required for the entire rig to come to a complete stop after hitting the overpass at the speed calculated above? Yes, you can neglect friction. * * *

Books Read in 2008

Mormon Doctrine6++++

The Children of Hurin+3

Fire Ice+++4.5 The Tipping Point++3

Three Weeks with My Brother+++4

Gentlemen of the Road+++2

His Dark Materials I, II, III 13++

Treasure of Khan6 +++++

Star Trek, strange new worlds4+ The Chase4+++

An Acceptable Time 4+++

Many Waters3++++

The list of books for 2008 come to 15 books and total of 5600, pages a far cry from 15000 I have planed to read. A good try on my part.

How Big Do They Get?

This one is the second snow man that was build.

The City had the first one taken down.

The story is, a Christmas Miracle had taken place.

This guy was build over night, by who, no one is saying and the city is going to want, a day or two, before doing something.

Its only 25 feet tall.

A Title, What Is In A Title Any Ways?

I'm tried of the Title of my blog.

So I'm going to re-title the blog.

Any new ideals?

Here is some ideals of my own.

My Turn On Earth.

While On Earth, I Did....................!

My Vacation On Earth.

One Fun Day On Earth

My Holiday On Earth.

My Walk About On Earth.

Memorable Days On Earth

Dan's Mission On Earth.

What Happed, When Dan Got to Earth.

When I Passed By Earth On My Way to Eternity.

Any other ideals, please vote or add a titles of your own.

There has been over 65 posting this year.

The the real number of comments thank to all is 385 or pretty close to that.

I would like to thank all, who read this thing and write comments, even if there short remarks. :)

Life of a Model

Rochelle's model.

Gotta test the hat's out on something, my head is to big.

She not to happy about this.

"What I have to do, to stay on mommy lap."

Field Trip for the Dogs

I was out driving around the day after Thanks Giving, and I came across this.

This man had 6 dog, on a foot ball field.
All taking turns doing trips and
different thing with them.

Whats interesting is that each dog wait his turn to play.

He has frisbees in his hands.

No school this day.

I don't think the school let dogs on the property, because they leave land mines behind.

You found this information posted at gates around schools.

How Low Will they Go?

Gas prices, that is.

This is one of our, local station, in Grants Pass, Oregon.

I drive by here almost everyday.

I came by here, at 6 AM at $1.99
and the next morning at 6 AM it had drop to 1.89, a .10 over night. ??

The family members in other countries, with really high prices, would find this interesting.

Lets hope it stay like this for a year or more, but I sure it will go back up in the spring, to $3.00 or more.

I wonder what other people are paying this time of year?

I was looking at a blogger in upper New York, show a local pump with $ 1.59.

As of 12/5/08 the sign now reads $1.79.

Diving, at the Howards

Diving at Howard Prairie lake, November 15, 2008.

Ben and Dan did two dives, 27 feet 35 minutes and 51 feet for 45 minutes.

Blue skies and 70 degrees air temp.

Water was 49 degrees, not to bad, as long as you keep moving.

First dive was at a boat ramp, hoping to find stuff.

Had to gear up at gate and hike about 350 feet to ramp.
Found anchor, crescent wrench, propeller, fishing pole, jelly shoe, and a bunch of small items.

We drove to the dam diving spot with our wet/dry suets on in the car, about 1 mile dive.

The water was about 49 degrees on dive gauges, I left the gauge out in the sun
when we ate lunch, it came up to 80 degrees.



Its about 100 miles round trip to the lake back home.

This is dive 69 and 70.

Book Report Time, The Children of Hurin

The Children of Hurin
By J.R.R. Tolkien and edited by Christopher Tolkien

This was a poem by the first Tolkien written in about 1920.
For this poem He used and ancient English alliterative merte, using a demanding patterns of stress and "initial rhyme".
(this is how it reads) LOL

till the faint flicker of fiery torches
flared before them; fitful murmur
as of many voices in meeting thronged
they heard as they hastened. High sprang the roof.
Round a sudden turning they swung amazed,
and saw a solemn silent conclave,
where hundreds hushed in huge twilight
neath distant domes darkly vaulted
the wordless waited.

So the story was wrote in this formate for about 2000 lines, then abandoned.
No one knows why, but Mr. Tolkien had done this many time, going up as high as 4000 lines of the same type of poetry, then abandoned. (writers block maybe?)

Any ways, the story in todays book, was compiled by J.R.R. Tolkien son and some other people, and written in story form with out any poetry stuff.

The story starts, out with the family tree, and you are soon lost on who's is who, and then the story goes on about the war in the north country, and how everyone s is soon dead.
The last Mother and Son and un-born sister, go on living the worst life possible.
The Son runs off to live in the hidden city to come back some day, when grown up and be a saving King to his people.
So everyone is blow to the four winds, and the Son living in a another city and meets and fair maiden and weds, and is soon to have his child and He goes off to fight a dragon.
The end.
So he kills the dragon, and was knotted out near the dragon body, and is laying there looking dead, and the maiden shows up and is doing the first aid stuff, and the dragon in his last dieing breath says,
" this is your lost brother that you have wed, and are about to bear his child"
Then the dragon dies.
The maiden, jump into a near by river and drowns, the Son, jumps on his sword.
The mother comes around, dies of a broken heart, the Father, is released from the northern King, to find every one died, and story end with Him stand there by Himself.
This is a very depressing story, no wonder J.R.R. Tolkien abandoned it.
The writing style is not of J.R.R. Tolkien quality , not even close to it.
My rating is a 1 star out of 5 stars.

Thing On Wheels ?

The wheel that you see these days.








I was setting at a gas station getting fuel and this bike pulled out from a side street.

Its home made all the way.
Part motorcycle, scooter, and peddle bike.

Book Report Time, The Tipping Point.

The Tipping Point, by Maclcolm Gladwell.

How little thing can make a difference.

Its a story about how the Hush Puppies Shoes Company had almost gone broke in 1994,as sales were 30,000 pairs.
Then a bunch of kids in New York, start wearing them and, by the end of 1995, and the word of mouth only, there sales had jumped to 430,000 pairs.

Sesame Street programs for kids and Blue's Clues was shaped by the kids who watching the programs.
What was interesting, with kids of ages 5 years old and under, there interest would last longer, if there were able to watch the same episode 5 days in a role, instead of mixing up the episode through out the week.
The ideal was that kids like being able to guess what was going to happen next as they start to remember the episode from the day before.
OR
When a child was watching and found it enjoyable, it wasn't because it was fun, but that they were understand what was going on.
And when the child was not watching, it was not because there where bored, but that they did not understand the episode.

Another interesting thing.
The human brain is only able to keep track of some many relationship between other persons.
So if you belong to a group of 5 person, then you would have to keep track of 10 separate relationships.
The 4 person you are talking with and 6 other two-way relationships, totaling 10 relationships.
So now, lets say, its 20 persons, 19 person that you talk to and 171 separate relationships.
Now lets step this up to the max, 150 person, this turns into 44,849 separate relationship, science believe this is the max that the human brain can keep track of.

And I'm lucky to remember who I talked to this morning. LOL

So this leads to the fact that organization that are controlled by one person, that reach 150 persons on the team, don't and can't function with out relationship problems between team members.

The armies largest groups are between 150 and 200 persons

The Gore factories, in the Delaware, have a rule, when the work teams reach 150 persons, they build a new building, and split the work force down to smaller teams.
They have some of the building across the parking lot from each other, but there smaller then 150 person in each building working together.
Gore company has about 10 buiding in the Delaware area.

The book is very interesting when they start talking about these items I wrote about here, there is a lot of other stuff you will have to read thought that was not so interesting.
I will gave it 2 1/2 stars out of 5.

Our Year Book Pic.

Our year book pictures just don't seem that real. LOL

You can see the parking lot forming on my hair line.

And Rochelle is just a happy person.
Just be happy!

More Lobster Dive Pic

Guy, one of the other diver's on the lobster dive sent these pictures. The Boat













The front of the boat.















I think that may be Ruddy.















Petety (tank has a small leak, really cut down on bottom time)
















Mr. Seal
















School of Fish.(school bus for the fish must of broke down, couldn't see it any were)

Hanging out at the anchor chain.

Who Has Voted ?

We are at about 120 hours left before, your voting rights are up for this round.

The Question Is:

Who Has Voted?

Roll Call Time Please.

Dan
Rochelle
Ben
Jessica *
Zac
Fiona
Andrew
Sari
Shannon
Ralph
Daniel *
Robyn
Paul
A gold star for the Jessica and Daniel.*
I felt bad for Megan and Greg not being able to vote.
Sound like you have to plan way ahead to vote out of the USA.

Vote, Vote, Vote, GET OUT AND VOTE

It time for everyone to get out there and Vote.

Its very important that we all vote.

It is one of the ways that we each can protect our freedom.

We are so important in Oregon, that we get two voters pamphlets.


If you were to tape each page from top to bottom into one long peace of paper, it would be 190 feet long, or make one big sheet out of it, it would be 10 feet by 12 feet.

One Vote

For a day of food for families hit hard,

For a week’s wages in behalf of American workers and American jobs,

For the month’s mortgage and a roof over their heads, foreclosures forestalled,

For a year’s medical coverage and prevention, instead of the ER,

For a decade to invest in the environment’s healing,

For a score of years or more of secure retirement, well earned,

For a generation of teachers, no longer self-funding their classrooms,

For a century of peace built on negotiation, not nukes,

For a new millennium, a new era,

A new leader,

For change.

Book Report Time, Fire Ice

Fire Ice by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos. This is a Kurt Austin Adventure.

The story begins around 1900, on the Black Sea on the Russia side on the sea. Theirs the bad guy who want to take over Russia, and restore it to power of the old days, a world power. Its always amazing how fast these people can travel all over the would in a blink of and eye, they travel half way across the world in a mater of hours, LOL. Its not a Durk Pitt story, but all the same is was a fun book to read.

The Fire Ice, is a substance:

Methane clathrate, also called methane hydrate or methane ice, is a solid form of water that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure (a clathrate hydrate). Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of Earth.

The story is will writen, but when another writer, joins in with Cussler, the Cussler style and touch is just not there.

The Lobster Dive

Randy and Dan dove off of a lobster boat on October 4, 5, 6, out of Long Beach, California.











This me suited up, for one of the many dive that we did, Dive master in back ground, and that is Catalina island.
The boat we lived on for 3 days. We ate, sleep, peed and dive for 3 days. This about 10 pm at night, you load your stuff on and stand around waiting for every one else to load up. The weather was bad of the cost, so the boat did not go out till about 4 am. I found my bunk and went to sleep about mid night. I did hear the boat start up, but I didn't know what time it was or did I care. LOL.

On the right is Randy coming out of the water from one of many dives.
I think Randy got 13 dives in.
Dan got 11 dives in, and on my 11th dive my high pressure hose failured at about 45 feet. I still had full tank of air, so I just took my time and came up slowly.

On the left is Captain Ray, look close He dives with no BC and not much of anything else. So one said He went down to 180 feet looking for lobster
No find.

Left is at Two Harbor.
The water was so clear, the diver on the right is at 40 feet down.








The lobsters was another story.
The hole boat only got about 12 lobster between 16 people. Randy can up with 2 keepers.
Tod and Rudy came up with most of these.
Here is one of the little guy, after being cooked.
Had a great time.

A Bird Life For Me ??

Out caching in Gold Hill and these birds, these Big Birds were watching over the cache or guarding the cache. (about 6 or 8)

I was only able to get with in about 50 feet of the nearest one. So I'm not complete sure of what there are.

They look like Buzzard, but I have learned that is a Turkey Vulture, because of the skinned head, like a wild turkey.
Information from Wikipedia.


The Turkey Vulture is a scavenger and feeds almost exclusively on carrion.^[4] It finds its meals using its sense of smell, flying low enough to detect the gases produced by the beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals. In flight, it uses thermals to move through the air, flapping its wings infrequently. It roosts in large community groups. Lacking a syrinx—the vocal organ of birds—its only vocalizations are grunts or low hisses.^[5] It nests in caves, hollow trees, or thickets, each year generally raising two chicks, which it feeds by regurgitation.^[6] It has very few natural predators.^[7] In the United States of America, the vulture receives legal protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.^[8]

DrDan Dose 100 FTF

You don't want to know what this is. LOL

This my 100 First To Find.

This is a dog turd, or looks like one.

I had to poke it with a stick before picking it up, it looked so real.

Blazerfan and Rain-man-rich were with me when I found this.

I had bigger ideal for my 100 FTF cache but o will.



Blazerfan took the picture.

All in a days fun.

Daniel Did It!

Daniel did it.

He completed the Duty To God Award.
It took all of the 6 years to complete it, but its done.
Daniel is the only young person I have seen received this in the Branch.

This is way cool, I'm really proud of Daniel for doing this.

A Day On Mountain Ashland

Labor day was the day I pick for the Big mountain bike ride off the hill.
We pick Mount Ashland.
We started out with 3 riders and ended up with 8 in the group.
In the picture to the right, going from left to right.
Noah, Dan (?), Randy, Ben, Paul, Daniel, Dan (Me), and John.
Two of the wifes drove the cars down from the ski area back to Litha park and stayed there with the babys.
It is a great ride, total of about 15 miles, and most of it was down hill.
It took about 2 hours to complete.















We found this nice jump, so it had to be jumped.
Daniel making a run at it in the yellow helmet.
Noah made a nice jump.
Than there was Dan, the picture only show Dan landing.
The then He dose this side ways,up side down, and land on his back.
I cut 2 hole in the front tube, and I think thats what made me crash.

Eight started and eight made it down the hill ok.

Maybe we can make the a Labor Day treadication.

Book Report Time, Undaunted Courage

Undaunted Courage, By Stephen E, Ambrose.
This is about the Lewis and Clark, hike, trip, adventure, and exploring or expedition.
I learn that the President Jefferson, had plan the trip out completely.
Lewis was the President's person secretary for some time and the President had been training Lewis for this trip, as He lived in the President home for over a year.

Lewis, also was sent off for 6 months to learn from experts in the fields of plant and animals, so as to be able to write down the description correctly.
Also, another expert in star observation, to learn to use a sexton as there was no know maps of the country that they would be crossing, this information would be helpful in drawing up the new maps.

As for the trip is self:
Jefferson was looking for a short cut to the Pacific ocean by a water way, it did not happen.
They would kill 10 elk, deer or buffalo a day for food.
They ate mostly meat, and at one point, they would consume 9 pounds of meat per man a day.
There favorite meat was dog meat, if the Indian's would sell it to them.

The bear was the hardest animal to kill.
One bear that they did kill, four men with 6 guns, four of the men shot four shots at the bear, 3 shot damage the bears lungs and chest, the forth shot hit the shoulder, the bear started chasing them, the next to guns shot and broke the bears shoulder this time, the bear still was coming after them two men went up a tree and the other two jump into the river, the bear jumped into the river to get the men.
A man in a boat shot one more shot into the bears head, and killed it.
When the bear was pulled out of the water, the bear had 8 holes in it, before its was killed.

Sacagawea, the only women in the group was along to help talk to the Shoshone Indians, so that there could get horses. She did have a baby on the trip, at age 16.
She was the youngest person in the group, until the baby was born.
She had become the property of her husband, because she had be won in a card game and make to be his wife, this was before the trip.

So to translate from Indian to English.
So heres how it worked.
Shoshone would talk to Sacagawea, and than,
Sacagawea, would talk to here husband in French,
Than He would talk to a French men,
And the French men would turn it into English,
So Lewis could understand what was said.

I could go on and on about thing like this, but will not.

This is like reading someones journal, so it was a bit slow at times, will a lot of the times.